Aspects of media communication in social networks

Abstract

The peer-reviewed two-volume monograph Social Networks: A Comprehensive Linguistic Analysis (2021) is devoted to the study of the existence of language in modern social networks. The first volume covers the general issues of the linguistic study of Internet communication, its linguocognitive and discursive aspects, as well as its characteristic speech genres. The second volume provides a description of linguo-personological, conflictological and linguo-didactic aspects of communication in social networks. Each volume has a predetermined structural sequence: an introduction by the scientific editor, three chapters, and an off-text bibliographiс list. Social networks in today’s world implement mainly the integrative function of language, aimed at overcoming spatio-temporal restrictions. An auxiliary machine translation option provided for major international Internet platforms also aims to remove the language barrier. The disintegrative potential of social networks, as an antinomic pandan of the integrative function, is manifested in the physical isolation and anonymization of users. The leading trends in the intralinguistic nature of media interaction should be recognized as the determination of industry terminologies as well as the hybridization of texts (turning them into hypertexts by supplying hyperlinks, supplying them metacommunicative symbols, etc.). The extralinguistic features include the massive nature of Internet bilingualism. In general, social networks continue the transhumanistic mission of language in the virtual space: to serve as a means of overcoming the negative aspects of being through the mediatization of man and society, which is expressed by such properties of Internet communication as achronism, acentricity (rhizomorphism), hybridity and alinearity.

Keywords:

Internet communication, social networks, integrative function of language, mediatization, Homo digitalis